LETTER - ‘The late Cavendish Morton’s racing enthusiasm’

Reader Letters from the Diss Express, dissexpress.co.uk, @diss_express on Twitter

In the report on artist Cavendish Morton’s death you mentioned his association with motor racing and in particular Snetterton, this is indeed true, he was the chairman of the Snetterton Motor Racing Club and would regularly be seen there sketching the racing cars.

In 1959 Cavendish also had the sad task of doing the artwork for the memorial at Snetterton for his friend Archie Scott Brown who had been killed racing at Spa the previous May.

In July 2006 the memorial was re-dedicated by Brian Lister and Jack Sears having been moved from its old position to the new scrutineers bay.

However ‘Cavy’s’ involvement was more than just sketching other peoples cars, he himself styled some of them. This arose when Cavy met John Ogier the head of Buxted Chicken at a party. Ogier was having John Tojeiro of Cambridgeshire build him a racing sports car using a Jaguar engine and asked Cavy to style the bodywork, this was before the days of wind tunnel testing and if it looked right it was right.

He was also involved with styling two road going cars the Britannia GT and Berkeley Bandit, unfortunately both projects failed as they proved too expensive compared to potential rivals Jaguar and Lotus.

The final cars styled for Tojeiro were mid-engined GTs for the Scottish team Ecurie Ecosse, one of which was driven by Jackie Stewart. Ironically this car was almost destroyed at Brands Hatch in 1966 and totally restored in 2001 by Brian Wingfield at his workshop on Eye Airfield, just a couple of miles from Cavy’s old home.